Sociology of Self in Modern Society EXAM 1

Reflexivity

a team characteristic of reflecting on and adjusting. constantly working on the self.

Cooley argued that the self is visceral, emphasizing "self-feeling." What does he mean by this? Provide an example that illustrates Cooley's model for the development of the self and explain what part of this experience is visceral. What does the visceral dimension of this experience show us about the social self?

the self represents deep inward feelings, rather than intellect. our idea's can only encounter eachother in that persons mind.not just an idea, its a viceral experience. There is something rooted deep in your body that you feel, this will affect your future actions. whether positive or negative, this will influence your future actions and how you behave.

Manner

visible emotion, congruent with all the other things that are happening in this situation, this makes what you say, believable

Unmasking Constructionism

harmful consequences of social constructions that have been made real

Ironic Constructionism

seeks to expose that everything is contigent; subject to change, taken for granted assumptions built into meaning

Face Saving Behavior

techniques used to salvage a performance (interaction) that is going sour

In discussing the social construction of reality, Maines outlines three types—though we might also think of them as levels— of constructionist analysis. Select one of the following symbols and briefly outline the emphasis of each level of constructionist analysis with regard to that specific symbol and its meaning(s).

-The conceptual center of the perspective, which some constructionists might argue does not exist, lies in the proposition that constructs (definitions, ideas, values, beliefs) are inseparable from and mutually constitutive of social conditions (categories, "facts," forms, structures). -historical: an event or social condition can be described in terms of previous social processes or conditions giving rise to it. -ironic: seeks to expose the underlying contingent bases of taken-for-granted obduracies, taken for granted assumptions built into meaning -unmasking: a step further to show the harmful consequences of social constructions that have been made real; reified construction, -reformist and rebellious: entails the explicit infusion of value positions into analyses, in which social conventions become the targets for critique and change, unpack what alternate forms of social constructionist forms are and then how we might seek to change the meaning to a socially constructed practice or value.

Cooley and Mead offered different models about the development of the self. Compare and contrast them. Your explanations should illustrate the different underlying assumptions about what is and is not important in the development of the self.

Cooley and the Social Self Empirical self. Cooley argued that although the idea of the self was cloaked in mystery. It should not be difficult to "get hold of" empirically. Cooley is interested in feeling and language Looking Glass self. we imagine how we physically appear to other people. We interpret others reactions to what we say and what we do We develop and redevelop a notion of who we are This happens every time we interact with anybody For mead, the self is about other people The notion of who you are that you present to others is different than the self that's actually you. you are anticipating at all times. Dialectical relationship I is driving the behavior. There are responses to what we say and do, or what we don't say and don't do. We make assumptions, we change our assumptions, this happens over and over. Stories that we tell are always about other people, even if we don't explicitly name them.

Goffman discusses the importance of belief when presenting the self on the front stage. Who has to believe what? Why? How is this accomplished?

Dramaturgy: social life can be examined through dramatrugical analysis claims reflect assumptions, control impressions other have about us. Impression Management notion of belief: not just about presenting the self, but about making it believable and authentic and compelling. intro p. 17: for whom does belief matter? audience always has to believe otherwise the interaction falls apart, performers are more so on a spectrum, we can also be authentic through this and it wont be put on.

For Goffman, is there an intrinsic self/a self that exists outside of interaction? Explain. If so, from where does it originate? If not, how do we produce and maintain a self? What does it take and from whom to establish and maintain face? What do we do if our performance is flawed? Can we repair it by ourselves? Why/why not?

Goffman said he is not a symbolic interactionist, rather a ritualist, connected to Immeal Durkheim there is a expectation, and we usually follow suit, a form of a "ritual" Ritual falls apart when people violate those rules and expectations. Fixing it is called face saving behavior. Face: a positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes. A notion of social identity which emerges through interaction. We cant give ourselves "face", we can only preform the roles. Social norms effect how we express and present ourselves. normative boundaries, we know there are limited expectations placed on our behavior. Individual choices come in as to how you have this ability to move forward and control the impression that others have of you. Life as a Stage: front, back, props, manner, impression management: We preform for other people, we present ourselves and act in a way that we believe others want to see us. Give these performances on the front stage, something is at stake, the claim of who you are. Your claim is no longer at stake and you can retreat and go to the backstage, you rest here and plan for future performances. sign vehicles: setting: location matter, props: clothes, hairstyles, tattoos, make up jewelry, laptops manner: visible emotion, congruent with all the other things that are happening in this situation, this makes what you say, believable Goffman is saying that self is an achievement, you only have a self because you have interactions which allow you to develop who you are.

Symbolic Interactionism

How people use, negotiate, and contest the meaning of symbols in order to conduct meaningful everyday behaviors

Psychological Social Psychology

Mind talk, rather than social talk. Cognitive processes. Primacy to the mind, not the social world.

Benzecry's discussion of opera fanatics offers insight into how culture matters in people's lives. How does his research illustrate the concept of practice theory? Make sure your explanation discusses practice theory and how it differs from the toolkit model of culture. (Could also ask same question re: Reeves piece).

Practice theory is how individuals make and transform the world we live in. This theory is represented in Benzecry's discussion because it shows how people take whats around them and transform it in to their own identity. social structure and human agency are working back and forth. Culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values toward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or "tool kit" of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct "strategies of action."

Discuss the similarities and differences between the symbolic interactionist and social structure and personality approaches in social psychology.

SI: Symbolic Interactionism: How people use, negotiate, and contest the meaning of symbols in order to conduct meaningful everyday behaviors Symbolic interactionism is a school of thought in sociology that explains social behavior in terms of how people interact with each other via symbols; in this view, social structures are best understood in terms of such individual interactions. ... Mead believed that one's self develops through social interactions. importance of social structure shapes individual action which in turn comes to how we think about ourselves. the development of a complex social self is correlated to interactions with othersA. Every person occupies a position in a social system. The relationships among these positions make up the social structure. Social structure and positions affect people in a last three ways. 1. We have role expectations about how occupants of positions will behave, e.g. we expect professors to behave in a certain way. 2. Positions are associated with sets of relationships, which we call social networks. Each of us is woven into several networks, including those involving coworkers, family, and friends. 3. Each position has a status associated with it. Some positions are more prestigious than others. B. Acting via roles, social networks, and status, social structure can affect the health, values, occupational attainment, and sense of belonging in society. (We will also consider how some other social psychological variables are relevant influences on these.)

Three Principles of SSP

SSP: Sociological Social Psychology. Primacy to the social world. How people as individuals experience the same social processes and many different institutionalized settings Component- we identify specific components of a social system that are most relevant to what ever it is we are trying to explain. What parts of the social environment are important Proximity- group interaction. The proximate social experiences that we experience in groups. Who do we do stuff with, how does your experience in small group settings reflect other bigger settings. Psychological- acknowledging that there is knowledge that we have psychologically that is important for sociology. Experience in psychology that accounts for things that happen in the social world Three principles outline how were moving from the big picture to the most micro level of analysis- the traits of an individual

Stryker and Burke make a point of clarifying what the term identity means in social psychology. How do they define it? How is that definition different from the everyday use of the term? Make sure you can explain the two "strands" (see page 288) and the way in which the authors connect them.

Social Identity Theory- Stryker and Burke- Two approaches to identiy theory Strykers theory: Structures→Self→Behavior In Sheldon Stryker's view, human social behavior is organized by symbolic designations of all aspects of the environment, both physical and social.2 Among the most important of these designations are the symbols and associated meanings of the positions that people occupy in social structures. These positions carry with them shared expectations about how people are to enact roles and, in general, to comport themselves in relation to others. As individuals designate their own positions, they call forth in themselves expectations about how they are to behave, and as they designate the positions of others, they become cognizant of the expectations guiding the role behaviors of these others. They also become aware of broader frames of reference and definitions of the situation as these positional designations are made. And most importantly, individuals designate themselves as objects in relation to their location in structural positions and their perceptions of broader definitions of the situation.Stryker reasoned that identities are parts of larger sense of self, and as such, they are internalized self-designations associated with positions that individuals occupy within various social contexts. Identity is thus a critical link between the individual and social structure because identities are designations that people make about themselves in relation to their location in social structures and the roles that they play by virtue of this location. Identities are organized into a salience hierarchy, and those identities high in the hierarchy are more likely to be evoked than those lower in this hierarchy. Not all situations will invoke multiple identities, but many do. The salience hierarchy determines those identities that are invoked by people as they orchestrate their roles and interpret the role behaviors of others. As a general rule, Stryker proposes that when an interaction situation is isolated from structural constraints, or these structural constraints are ambiguous, individuals will have more options in their choice of an identity, and hence, they will be more likely to evoke more than one identity. But as a situation becomes embedded within social structures, the salience hierarchy becomes a good predictor of what identities will be used in interaction with others. Burkes theory: Internal dynamics→Behavior individuals carry general views of themselves to all situations, or an idealized self, but it is the working self or self-image that guides moment-to-moment interaction.8 The idealized self may, of course, influence just how individuals see themselves in a situation, but the key dynamics of self revolve around trying to verify this working self or self-image in situations as individuals play roles. At other times, Burke has also conceptualized self as a rough hierarchy.9 At the more abstract level is a principle self in which cultural standards contained in broader values and beliefs become part of how individuals see themselves, but this principle-level self influences behavior in situations through a program-level identity consisting of the goals that individuals seek to realize in a concrete situation. In general, the more a program-level identity is guided by a principle-level self and the more the goals of the program-level self are realized in a situation, the greater are persons' sense of efficacy

What is the relationship between language and the social self for Charles Cooley?

The Social Self- the meaning of "I" requires that self and other are only a person's ideas and thus can encounter each other only in that person's mind, a conception which also entails that self and that web of others that together comprise society (being personal ideas) have no priority and are essentially contemporaneous. Emphasizing sympathy as the key mechanism of the old theory of communication. The I of common language always has more or less distinct reference to other people as well as the speaker, but because I wish to emphasize and dwell upon the social aspect of it. It seems to exist in a vague though vigorous form at the birth of each individual and like other instinctive ideas or germs of ideas, to be defined and developed by experience, becoming associated, or incorporated with muscular, visual and other sensations; with perceptions, apperceptions, and conceptions of every degree of complexity and of infinite variety of content, and especially with personal ideas. "I" means primarily self feeling. "I" is known primarily to our experience as a feeling or a feeling ingredient in our ideas and therefore is cannot be described or defined without suggesting that feeling. I and Me are attached to emotions and feelings portrayed to others based upon hearing the word along with an expression.

Consider Stryker and Burke's conceptualization of identity and how it differs from the everyday use of the term. Select a meaningful identity that is part of who you are, explain how it came to be part of your complex social self, and provide a specific example of how and when said identity would be particularly salient in a choice you have made in a specific institutional context.

They believe in identity salience and that we have multiple roles. Burke believes we have a control standard for our identities. Self is an occupant of a role in the situation.

Lizardo and Strand outline two primary approaches to understanding what culture is and how it operates in our lives. Compare and contrast these two models.

Toolkit theory: toolkit theorists point out that individuals do not seem to possess the highly coherent, overly complex and elaborately structured codes, ideologies or value systems that the classical theory of socialization leads us to expect they should possess. deeply internalized "reasons" can not be the cause of action. these social structures become support for action. outside of the head externalized action. Culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values toward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or "tool kit" of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct "strategies of action." Practice theory is how individuals make and transform the world we live in.

Zimbardo highlighted the ways in which institutions can lead good people to do "bad" things. Provide an example that illustrates his argument. Do not discuss jails/prisons. Make sure your example highlights the mechanisms that Zimbardo argued are integral in this process.

Zimbardo's main point of the essay is to show that a combination of outside factors along with some that are put on the individual by institutions can change the "goodness" in someone and completely change their morals and values in a matter of hours. our social environments dictate our behaviors and implicitly the understandings of those behaviors. Taken with Goffman we can see that we modify our performances based on time and location but also that our capacity to give various performances are shaped by our environments.

Explain Mead's two part model of the self. What is the relationship between the two key components?

a "me" is inconceivable without an "I." an object involves a subject. "I" is objective, "I" is what the memory depicts itself as in terms of acting towards himself along with the identical self in which acts towards others. The stuff that goes to make up the "me" whom the "I" addresses and whom he observes, is the experience which is induced by this action of the "I." If the "I" speaks, the "me" hears. If the "I" strikes, the "me" feels the blow. The "I" of introspection is the self which enters into social relations with other selves. It is not the "I" that is implied in the fact that one presents himself as a "me." And the "me" of introspection is the same "me" that is the object of the social conduct of others. Mead levels with the reader and states, "I" is the self that holds relationships with others while "me" is what one presents themselves as to others.

Schema

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information. road map in our brains

Institution

a long-lasting pattern of organization in a community

Social Structure

a pattern of organized relationships among groups of people within a society

Social Structure and Personality

a perspective within sociological social psychology that focuses on the connections between larger societal conditions and the individual

Dramaturgy

an approach pioneered by Erving Goffman in which social life is analyzed in terms of its similarities to theatrical performance

Personality

an individual's characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling. psychological traits that make up who we are

Back Stage

area of social interaction away from the view of an audience, where people can rehearse and rehash their behavior

Front Stage

area of social interaction where people perform and work to maintain appropriate impressions

Props

clothes, hairstyle, makeup,

Self

different from personality. " that which in a person is really and intrinsically he. a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness." belonging naturally.

Reformist and Rebellious Constructionism

entails the explicit infusion of value positions into analyses, in which social conventions become the targets for critique and change, unpack what alternate forms of social constructionist forms are and then how we might seek to change the meaning to a socially constructed practice or value. Ex: race and ethnicity: how these identities think we about ourselves and present ourselves and how other think about what we say and do. how race comes to be so central, but changes in different societies that we are considering, how humans decide what things in the world decide what has meaning.

Grazian builds upon the work of Goffman by discussing ritualized performances of masculinity. However, we know Goffman was not an interactionist; Grazian is. How does his piece "The Girl Hunt" represent a symbolic interactionist approach to producing and maintaining the self?

our behavior around others is part of collective impression management, not only are we responsible for how others understand us, but we are involved in supporting others claims, which in turn affect our own behaviors. interactionist framework, "girl hunt" takes a lot of Goffmans ideas about ritual. context and group ritual matters Grazian found that the art of girl hunting has three separate traits which define the pursuit, the girl hunt acts as a collective activity, a homosocial activity, as well as a ritualistic & performative. pregaming is the collective activity they engage in to pump each other up. the hunt is about fitting into the status quo as it is trying to actually meet someone and build a connection with them

Identity

our sense of self. can change in different settings. most noticeable in a given set of rules in which you will behave and in interactions this aspect can rise about the other identities which will still be a part of you but they can change and sometimes you will stop having that identity and replace it.

Lizardo and Strand discuss the process of socialization as it relates to practice theory. This model of socialization posits the individual as more than simply a receptor of "stuff" in the process. Explain how they discuss the process and how it changes the individual as they are socialized into a particular culture.

practice theory conceives of the socialization process as leaving long-lasting ''marks'' on the cognitive make-up of the actor. There are two main reasons for why this is the case. First, practice theory sees the material (lived) environment—including objects, tools, artifacts, etc.—and the practical knowledge and tacit (non-propositional) presuppositions stored in objects and spaces (see Harvey, 2010) as being as important (and in some contexts more important) in the cultural transmission and acquisition process as the set of mechanisms that American sociologists prefer to focus on: person-to-person interaction—in the contexts of emerging micro-cultures in small collectivities From the practice perspective, socialization is best thought of as the protracted modification of the ''mindful body'' (SheetsJohnstone, 1999:489) as a consequence of being ''encompassed by'' a given experiential environment (Bourdieu, 2000:130). This results in the acquisition of a ''taste'' for exposure to similar experiences, which durably impacts the person at a direct perceptual, motor-schematic (Bourdieu, 1990:69) and ultimately motivational level

Gergen argues that there are only two theoretical approaches for a promising future of social psychological research into the self—incorporation of the social world into the ontology of the mind or incorporation of the mind into an ontology of the social world. Which path does Gergen suggest is actually feasible? Why? What is the issue with the other theoretical model?

rather than reduce our underlying assumptions that the social world revolves in peoples mind and internalized, we flip the script and embrace the ontology of social life and embrace the categories of social life we can make connections and build on them and think about who the social world develops who we are and how identities constitute a bigger notion of the social self.

Impression Management

the attempt by people to get others to see them as they want to be seen

Face

the esteem in which an individual is held by others

Identity Salience

the probability of a particular identity being invoked by self or others within or across social situations

Social Construction of Reality

the process by which people creatively shape reality through social interaction. Constructionist agenda: the attempt to show that no matter how sedimented social conditions may appear or actually be, those conditions nonetheless are produced, maintained, and changed through interpretive processes

Sign Vehicles

the term used by Goffman to refer to how people use social setting, appearance, and manner to communicate information about the self

social identity theory

theory in which the formation of a person's identity within a particular social group is explained by social categorization, social identity, and social comparison